The Hanged Man
by Twinings
Summary: By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.  I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.


_Note: written for the Free-For-All-Fic-For-All at the AskTheSquishykins tumblr._

_Prompt: Jonathan and Harley friendship shenanigans (with Harley committing said shenanigans and Crane having to deal with them)  
><em>

_This is...light on shenanigans. But the friendship is there!  
><em>

_Trigger warning: medical/psychiatric abuse. The treatment in this story is not an instrument of torture when used correctly, and can in fact be quite helpful to some patients, but has potential to cause serious harm when used by an unscrupulous or incompetent doctor._

_Credit to Techie for inspiring some Riddler dialogue. Title and description from the poem by Sylvia Plath.  
><em>

* * *

><p>When Harley was in Arkham and Mr. J was out, she spent her time with Red. When Red was out, too, she usually hung around with Professor Crane's group.<p>

When Riddles and Hatter were _also_ out making trouble for Batman, well, it got awfully quiet in the rec room. She and the Professor could talk psychology for a while, but after a couple of days of it, she got bored. He had taught her to play chess, and she had taught him to play checkers, but neither of them enjoyed the other's preferred game all that much. Sometimes they watched TV together, but he had no appreciation for a good Warner Brothers cartoon, and she got fidgety watching C-SPAN. Sometimes they swapped books, and that worked better. A well-crafted horror story used a lot of the same tools you needed for comedy, so she could appreciate that. And he pretended he didn't care about her romance novels, but she knew he devoured everything she passed along to him, just for the sake of having something new.

But a lot of the time, they just sat quietly together. It was in both their best interests to be with someone—she didn't like feeling lonely, and he tended to get tripped in the halls or have his lunch stolen if he didn't have someone watching his back—but really, she hung out with him because she liked him.

Even when all he did was sit there and stare at the floor.

"Professor Crane? You okay?" she asked after the third day of such silence.

"Hmm? Fine," he said without looking up. She poked him in the ribs. He frowned in her general direction.

"You don't look fine."

"Haven't been sleeping," he said curtly.

"Oh. What's the matter, Scary? Bad dreams?"

"Mm."

She could see dark circles under his eyes. She'd just thought someone had punched him again.

"You want to take a nap on the couch? I can move if you want to stretch out."

"_Here_? I think not."

"Nobody's gonna mess with ya. Look, I'll stand guard!"

"Harley, last time I fell asleep with you around, _you _drew genitalia on my face with a permanent marker."

Oh, yeah. She giggled. That had been pretty funny. The marks hadn't washed off for days.

"I said I was sorry." She hadn't meant it. "You want a cookie?"

"No."

"I saved mine from lunch. C'mon. You look like you need a cookie. You got a sad face," she said with an exaggerated frown.

"Oh, not you, too," he groaned.

"Huh?" She started gnawing on her leftover cookie.

Bleh. He'd made the right choice in refusing it.

"The latest brainless addition to the staff just diagnosed me with clinical depression."

"Well…you do…sort of show a _few_ signs—"

"I've never felt better in my life," he snapped. Harley shrank back. Professor Crane glared at the floor for about as long as it would have taken her Puddin' to knock her over the back of the sofa and stomp out of the room. Then he muttered something that might have been "sorry."

Harley squealed and threw her arms around him. He jerked away like he'd been burned. He did that every time she touched him. But she didn't mind. She knew he was just a great big Grumpy Bear who kept all his warm and fuzzy on the inside.

She threw herself across his lap and sang "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" until the vein in his forehead looked like it was going to pop right out and fly around the room.

It was a fun day.

At the end of rec time, as all the patients were getting ready to file back to their cells, one of the orderlies came over and pulled Professor Crane out of line.

"Come on, Scarecrow. Time for your treatment."

"Treatment? What treatment?"

"What, do I look like a head shrinker to you? Just move."

Professor Crane looked back at Harley. She shrugged and gave him a cheerful wave as the orderly grabbed him by the shoulder and propelled him down the hall.

She didn't see him again that day. But he did wake her up in the middle of the night with a wail and then a thump as he fell out of bed.

-0-

Tuesday at rec time, Harley set up the chessboard. The rumor mill was saying Riddles was back in, and the minute he was released into the population, Professor Crane was probably going to go back to ignoring her. Supervillainy was such a boys' club.

Not that he was paying all that much attention to her, anyway. He was playing with the rook, setting it on its edge and spinning it in a slow circle. She wondered if he had forgotten she was there.

"Professor Crane?"

He nearly jumped out of his skin.

"What?" He sighed. "Harley, I don't feel like playing today."

"Didn't sleep again last night?"

"Mm."

"Nightmares?"

"_Hm_."

"Well? What'd ya dream about?"

"Being buried alive." He placed the chess piece precisely in the center of its square.

"Oh, that's a good one!" He glared at her. "No, I mean it's real scary."

"'Real scary,'" he repeated under his breath.

"Maybe you should try warm milk before bed."

He didn't bother to answer that. He sure did get rude and grouchy when he was tired.

"You could try napping—"

"No!"

"Yeesh." She picked up one of her pawns and moved it diagonally across the board. When he didn't lecture her about the illegal move, she picked up another one and moved it all the way over to his side, knocking his bishop out of the way. "King me!"

Professor Crane swept his arm across the table, sending the chessboard flying. Chess pieces scattered all over the floor.

This time, he didn't apologize.

After rec time, the same orderly came to pull him out of line. Professor Crane planted his feet.

"I'm not going."

The orderly shoved him.

"Move."

"No. You can't do this to me. Not without my consent."

"No one cares about your consent."

Harley didn't watch as the orderly dragged him away, but she could hear his feet slipping against the battleship linoleum as he tried to dig in his heels all the way down the hall.

-0-

On Wednesday, Harley had a therapy session with Joanie. She was a real nice doc, and she was always okay with letting Harley chatter away about whatever was on her mind.

But this time, Harley didn't feel like chatting.

"I was wondering…" she said, hanging upside down on Joan's Freud-style couch with her feet on the wall, just because she could. Joan perked up. She always did when Harley put on her _professional _accent. "Professor Crane has been acting even more off than usual since he started that new treatment the other day. What exactly's going on with him, anyway?"

Joanie didn't look happy about that question. Well, that was one of the benefits of lounging the way she did. That frown was automatically turned upside-down.

"He hasn't talked to you about it?" Joan asked in that gentle tone that said Harley wasn't going to like what she had to say. Slowly, Harley sat up.

"The guy's not much of a talker, Joanie, you know that. Now spill. What are you doing to him?"

"_I'm_ not—"

"Collective 'you'."

Joan sighed.

"Professor Crane is undergoing electroconvulsive therapy."

Harley shot to her feet.

"What?" she screeched. "What is this, the dark ages?" She saw Joan's hand hovering over the security alarm, but she couldn't contain herself. "You _know_ what the risks are with electroshock. Are you going to start doing this to the _rest_ of us?"

"Of course not. It's a measure of last resort. But it can be very effective in cases of severe depression. Dr. Higgins is only trying to help Professor Crane, and I think you know that."

Harley slammed both hands down on Joanie's desk. Joan hit the call button. She gave her patients a lot more leeway than most of the quacks at Arkham, but she had her limits.

"He's not depressed! The guy's only problem is that he can't sleep, and you know what doesn't help with that? Nightmares! You don't pump a claustrophobic full of muscle relaxants that make him feel like he's smothering to death, and expect that to make him _better_!"

"Claustrophobic?"

Whoops. She had promised him she would never say a word about that. _She_ only knew about it because he'd broken down and had a panic attack in front of her one time when Bolton was still there. He was so _touchy_about losing control of himself.

Well, too late to go back. She took the chance to shake her fist just as two orderlies burst in and tackled her.

"Of _course_ that boob you've got treating him didn't bother to find that out!" The orderlies wrestled her to the floor. She fought back, only because giving in too easily would seem unnatural. "Just you wait, Henry Higgins! Just you wait! You'll be sorry, but your tears will be too late!"

"His name's Meredith," one of the orderlies offered.

"Really? That's _terrible_!"

She spent the rest of the day sedated, and had a very vivid dream about her loving Mr. J. It was a nice dream, but not as nice as the real thing.

-0-

On Thursday, Professor Crane didn't show up for breakfast.

When he wasn't there for lunch, either, she traded her favorite tacky cocktail ring to Magpie for a promise of information. It wasn't worth much, but it was sparkly, a long oval set with rows of glittering round stones. Mags played with it for a good ten minutes before admitting that she'd been taken off assisting the file clerks after walking away with Dr. Bart's gold pen, so she had no idea where they were keeping the Scarecrow. She left before Harley could snatch her ring back.

Harley saved her cookie again, just in case, but she ended up eating it herself at bedtime.

-0-

On Friday, Riddles showed up at rec time. Harley shoved a couple of gossip-hungry D-listers out of the way and sat down next to him.

His arm was in a cast, thanks to Batman. The doctors had made it yellow, probably just to mess with him. Harley got her hands on a marker and started doodling happy faces on it.

She was hoping for some news, but it seemed like all he could do was yawn at her.

"Don't tell me. You've got that insomnia that's been going around."

"You try sleeping in the infirmary with the Scarecrow tossing and turning in the next bed."

Harley found herself clutching his arm with both hands. He yelped, in surprise or pain, she didn't know. Or care.

"He's there? What happened? When's he getting out?"

"Often talked of, never seen. Ever coming, never been. Daily—" She tightened her grip. "Ow! Tomorrow!" He pulled himself out of her grasp. "Lanky ruler. Try it sometime."

She registered that he had just used an anagram or something, but she didn't bother trying to work it out.

-0-

On Saturday, Harley ate breakfast alone. She waved at the Riddler, but he didn't come over and join her, so she amused herself by drawing pictures on the table with rubbery grape jelly.

She ate lunch alone, too. Her jelly pictures were still there.

When it came time to check out, she wasn't going to give this place's housekeeping a very good score.

At rec time, she tried to rope the Riddler into a game of chess. She was even going to concentrate extra hard so he wouldn't decide it wasn't worth his time halfway through. But he kept himself well out of grabbing range when he told her no, and she was forced to sit alone, trying to fold a page from an old issue of _Tiger Beat_ into a recognizable shape.

Well, it would be hard to play chess anyway, now that some of the pieces had gone missing.

She had just gotten her piece of origami looking about as good as it ever would, when Professor Crane was escorted back into the rec room.

He wasn't looking so good. He had a cast on his foot and his arm in a sling, and the shadows under his eyes were so purple they were almost black. The orderly left him on the couch next to her. He glared.

"Did _you_ tell them I was having trouble with the muscle relaxants?"

"Well, yeah." He looked like he wanted to murder her. "I was tryin' to help!"

"_Stop helping me_!" A few of the other inmates looked over, startled by the outburst. He lowered his voice, but only slightly. "What did you think was going to happen, Harley? Did you think they were going to stop the treatments? They're not going to stop. They _never_ stop." He wasn't looking at her anymore. He wasn't looking at anything. He sank back against the scratchy couch cushions and let his eyes fall shut. "I just want it to stop."

Harley gave him her almost-perfect origami crane. He took it, but obviously didn't know what to say.

"Feel better, Professor Crane." She kissed him on the forehead.

A few minutes later, he was asleep with his head on her shoulder. She remembered that no one had taken back her marker from the day before, but after a look at his sleeping face, she decided not to use it.

-0-

The next time Harley saw Dr. Higgins, Harley broke out of line to punch him in the face. Repeatedly.

"You don't—" Punch. "Induce—" Punch. "A seizure—" Punch. "That causes—" Punch. "Dislocations—" Punch. "And—" Punch. "Fractures!"

At that point, she fractured the doctor's skull, and left a permanent impression in the wall.

Professor Crane was the one who ended up in solitary, supposedly for inciting her to violence.

But after that, the electroshock machine went unused for a long, long time.


End file.
